In late November 2017, the New Constellations Tour, a Nation(s)wide tour of music and arts, pulled into Thunder Bay. Before their performance, the touring artists spent the day at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School doing workshops with the students. Peterborough Songwriter Nick Ferrio joined Leah Fay and Peter Dreimanis of July Talk to do a songwriting workshop. In collaboration with the students attending the workshop, they came up with the beginning of what would become Mourning Keeps Coming Back. DFC High School services dozens of Indigenous communities near and far from Thunder Bay that don't have a high school, the students travelling away from home and living in boarding homes in order to get a high school education. After the tour, Ferrio, Fay and Dreimanis kept in touch with the staff and students at the school and joined other New Constellations artists Cris Derksen and Ansley Simpson on a studio session with Broken Social Scene to record a musical bed track to the song that they had written with the students. Then, Ferrio, Fay and Dreimanis travelled back to DFC to record the students singing and performing guitar and keys on the track at the school. During a school trip to Toronto and Ottawa in May, the students finished recording and mixing the track at Dreamhouse Studios. The artists involved in the New Constellations Tour look forward to a lasting friendship with DFC, as the school works toward the funding and construction of a new school and living centre in the coming years.